


System-Adaptive Monitor

by Rokeon



Series: Sam's Origin AU [1]
Category: Tron (1982), Tron (Movies), Tron - All Media Types, Tron: Legacy (2010)
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Alternate Universe, Gen, Origins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-10
Updated: 2012-03-10
Packaged: 2017-11-01 18:41:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/360014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rokeon/pseuds/Rokeon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>System-Adaptive Monitor: Sam. He can't wait to meet him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For a [kinkmeme prompt:]() Sam wasn't born from the union of Kevin Flynn and Jordan Canas. Instead, he is a program that Flynn and Alan wrote together.

It's Tron who requests a new security program, though he has trouble articulating what exactly he wants. Something more than just another system monitor, he explains; his current helpers are good at their jobs but are too limited, too clearly defined. Even Tron himself, for all the upgrades he's received, has trouble keeping up with all the challenges the Grid keeps tossing out. He needs a true assistant, someone who can operate independently when they're dealing with multiple problems and won't get thrown when the Grid inevitably comes up with another new and different way to try to derez them all. Flynn listens, nodding, and tells Tron he'll do his best. He means it.

The first thing he does after the laser reassembles him in the arcade is go and talk to Alan.

Tron didn't criticize Flynn's own work, he never would, but Kevin can read between the lines. The system monitors are his design, or designs from other coders that he pulled off the Encom servers and modified for the Grid, and they're not enough. Tron needs more than a security program written by a somebody who's really still a game designer at heart; there's a reason the arena is at the heart of the city and the gridbugs are still tearing it apart at the fringe. He needs the best, and Kevin can't think of anyone who can write a security program better than Alan Bradley.

He spins it to Alan as something he needs for a private project, protection for his personal server where he tries out experimental programs that keep having unexpected errors. It's almost the truth. He needs a system monitor that can change to suit new conditions without waiting for external updates or commands, something that can handle problems when Flynn has no way of knowing in advance what those problems will be. He's basically asking for the impossible, and Alan tells him so. But he says it with a smile that Kevin recognizes from talking to Tron, one that says he's looking forward to the challenge. Game on.

It's complicated as hell to write software when you can't fully explain to your co-creator what operating system it has to work on, what other programs it has to coordinate with, and what exactly you need it to do. Alan finally throws up his hands and says that if Kevin absolutely has to keep his precious system so secret, he can handle all the heavy lifting himself; Alan will help him write the bare bones of the program, enough to make it operational, but all the virus libraries and other specializations will have to be added in later. Flynn figures this just means the new program will need a little on-the-job training with Tron before he can go solo. He can work with that.

Thank God Kevin is CEO, because no one else could get away with monopolizing Encom's chief operating officer like this. He knows that Alan has made this adaptive monitoring program his highest priority because he thinks that Flynn needs it to work on creating the next big thing for the company. And he would feel guilty about leading his friend on, he really would, but every time he goes onto the Grid Tron's face is a little more exhausted, his circuits a little less bright. Kevin's keenly aware of how long the coding is taking and how much faster time passes for the security program than it does in the real world.

And then one morning Alan pauses at the keyboard, tilts his head a little as he looks at the screen, and then decisively reaches out and hits compile. Kevin starts fidgeting before it can finish running, drumming his fingers on the desk and looking back and forth between the screen and the clock. Alan, who's clearly had a weight lifted off his shoulders now that they're finished, just laughs at him. When the compiler finishes running, he passes the disc over and tells Kevin to run home and play; Alan will make up an excuse if anyone comes by the office looking for him.

Flynn would protest, but that would mean more time wasted before he can get to the arcade and start uploading. System-Adaptive Monitor: Sam. He can't wait to meet him.


	2. Chapter 2

"Well, shit."

So it turns out that the Grid (or the laser, or Kevin's brain, or whatever quasi-mystical force it is that allows a collection of ones and zeros to be embodied with arms and legs and the ability to hold a decent conversation) takes 'adaptive-learning utility that has enough initial structure to run but still needs to be taught its functions' and interprets it as 'baby.' Which makes a certain amount of sense, in retrospect, but this is seriously not cool. How the hell is Sam supposed to help Tron when the only thing it looks like the little guy would know to do with an identity disc is use it as a teething ring?

Okay, Kevin has to admit that the thought of a baby program using a tiny disc as a teething ring is pretty damn cute. And the kid even came already suited up in his own little version of the standard program armor, a single broad line of circuitry running from shoulder to ankle on either side of his body. But cute isn't going to derezz any gridbugs and it's definitely not going to give Tron the relief he needs. Right now Sam's not an assistant, he's one more liability that will need to be protected.

Speaking of protected... does the Grid even have such a thing as a babysitter? Flynn's never seen a program who was anything other than an adult before. All of the programs he brought into the system arrived full-grown, complete with all the knowledge they needed to do their jobs. Which probably means that there aren't any teachers, either. This situation just keeps improving as he thinks it through.

So what is he supposed to do with the kid?

"Flynn? The portal is active, are you still in there?"

And how does he explain him to Tron?

\------

"It's a very small program. That's been miniaturized out of proportion."

Tron's voice is flat, the way it gets sometimes when Flynn proposes something a little too far out of the program's comfort zone. Last time it was modifying a lightcycle so that he could try wakeboarding on the ribbon; he'd asked Tron to drive.

"They're called babies, man. It's what users look like when they're brand new, we're pretty ridiculous for the first couple of cycles."

Ridiculous isn't the half of it. Sam started fussing a few microcycles ago, so Flynn pulled out some of the energy he keeps stashed for emergencies and edited the bottle into something a little more baby-friendly. He's nursing away now, cradled against Flynn's chest, completely focused on his glowing first meal. Tron will be able to retire if the kid still works this hard when he's all grown up.

But when will that be? Programs don't age, as far as Flynn has been able to tell, so there's no way to be sure that Sam will grow up at all. Even if he does, if he ages and matures the same way human children do, the Grid is just about the least childproof place ever invented. Not to mention the total lack of everything from playmates to pacifiers. He's going to have to figure out another option, and he's going to have to do it quick.

By the time he has to leave to catch the portal he's got a temporary patch worked out. Sam is going to stay with Astra, one of Tron's other helpers, whose primary childcare qualification is that Flynn's pretty sure he remembers her user bringing homemade cookies to work once; that has to be better than leaving the kid with someone written by a programmer who lives on Cup Noodles and soda, and that rules out most of the population of the Grid. Even Tron was written by a man who thinks popcorn is one of the four basic food groups. (Alan also thinks that no one knows that the old air popper from his cubicle is currently hidden in the back of the file drawer of the big executive desk in his fancy corner office. He's wrong.)

Astra swore that she'd do everything in her power to keep Sam safe. She actually looked fascinated by the idea of him, unlike the badly-hidden panic on Tron's face when Flynn first mentioned needing someone to take care of the baby, so that's another point in her favor. Hopefully she'll buy him enough time to get back to the real world and get started on setting up that other option.

Just as soon as he figures out what it is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Winzler did art of [Tron and baby Sam](http://tronkinkmeme.livejournal.com/3950.html?thread=3484014#t3484014)!!


	3. Chapter 3

Two weeks later, uncomfortably aware of exactly how much longer its been inside the system than it's been for him outside, Kevin admits defeat. He can't make the Grid into something child-friendly without completely overhauling it, and if that was a viable option then he wouldn't have needed to come up with a new security fix in the first place. Designing an alternate environment for Sam to grow up in will take too long and won't prepare him for the complexity of the Grid besides. Saving the program to a disc and stashing it up on a shelf until things on the Grid have been sorted out enough to give him the opportunity to come back and work on a solution... also not a viable option. Kevin hasn't really let himself think about why.

Then he hears that Jordan Canas is back in town, after spending most of the past year incommunicado on some overseas building site, and Kevin has a truly crazy idea.

\------

"Let me get this straight," Jordan says a few hours later. "You have, in the barely more than nine months since we broke up, somehow come into possession of a newborn baby. A baby you can't explain except to say that there wasn't anything illegal involved in the acquisition, and don't think I can't hear you splitting hairs there. And because you can't explain how you came by said kid, you want me to... what? Pretend to be that woman in the movies who leaves a basket on her ex's doorstep with a note that says, 'Here, it's your problem now?'"

Kevin winces. It sounds a whole lot worse when she puts it that way. "It sounds worse when you put it that way."

The look Jordan is giving him is unpleasantly reminiscent of Tron's wakeboarding-face.

\------

A couple more hours and several drinks later, she's agreed to play along. On conditions: she gets to be the cool Aunt Jordan, for one, the sort of quasi-relative who periodically sweeps in to drop off incredible gifts before jetting off to whatever exotic destination needs a great architect next. And she makes him swear that he will explain things to Sam – "I don't care who got knocked up and how, Kevin, but I refuse to have my fake kid spend his whole life thinking I abandoned him" – as soon as he's old enough to understand. Also, Kevin absolutely cannot let the press find out until she's safely back out of the country.

Kevin knew there was a reason he almost proposed to this woman. They would have been great together if they hadn't both been married to their careers already.

Then the birthday present discussion leads into Jordan discovering that he hasn't actually made any kind of arrangements for Sam's arrival. Which leads to a slightly-tipsy shopping spree through what feels like every baby product store in the greater metropolitan area. He knows no one will ever believe him later, but it's Jordan who insists on buying the Tron action figure. She says Sam will need it when he's older.

It's the same justification Kevin mirrors back at her when he insists on buying all the Frisbees.

\------

The next evening, when Jordan has a dinner meeting she can't get out of, Flynn heads to the arcade to pick up his security program – his son. It's a quick in-and-out visit to the Grid, just long enough to retrieve Sam from Astra (he's never actually seen a program look frazzled before) and to tell Tron the new plan. He's going to be a little busy getting the kid settled, he warns, and he won't be able to come back to the Grid as much as he'd like. But he has an idea for a new sysadmin program to run things while he's gone.

And somehow, for the next seven years, it works. More than works. Encom has never been stronger, dominating every market it moves into and pushing humanity closer and closer to the digital frontier. Sam is flourishing, growing like a weed and soaking up everything from arcade games to schoolwork so fast that he might as well be downloading it. And the Grid, with Tron's protection and Clu's guidance, has just seen something Flynn can only describe as a miracle dream themselves into being from the Sea of Simulation. It's more than he could have asked for, more than he ever even knew to want.

It makes everything that comes later that much worse.


End file.
